CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE ULTIMATE TEST.
BEFORE the Italian beauty, Balsamo stopped, with his heart full of painful but no longer violent thoughts.
“Here I stand,” he mused, “sad but resolute, and plainly seeing my situation. Lorenza hates me and betrayed me as she vowed she would do. My secret is no longer mine but in the hands of this woman who casts it to the winds. I resemble the fox caught in the trap, who gnaws off his leg to get away, but the hunter coming on the morrow and seeing this token can say: ‘He has escaped but I shall know him when I catch him again.’
“Althotas could not understand this misfortune, which is why I have not told him; it breaks all my hope of fortune in this country and consequently in the Old World, of which France is the heart—it is due to this lovely woman, this fair statue with the sweet smile. To this accursed angel I owe captivity, exile or death, with ruin and dishonor meanwhile.
“Hence,” he continued, animating, “the sum of pleasure is surpassed by that of harm, and Lorenza is a noxious thing to me. Oh, serpent with the graceful folds, they stifle: your golden throat is full of venom; sleep on, for I shall be obliged to kill you when you wake.”
With an ominous smile he approached the girl, whose eyes turned to his like the sunflower follows the sun.
“Alas, in slaying her who hates me, I shall slay her who loves.”
His heart was filled with profound grief strangely blended with a vague desire.
“If she might live, harmless?” he muttered. “No, awake, she will renew the struggle—she will kill herself or me, or force me to kill her. Lorenza, your fate is written in letters of fire: to love and to die. In my hands I hold your life and your love.”
The enchantress, who seemed to read his thoughts in an open book, rose, fell at the mesmerist’s feet, and taking one of his hands which she laid on her heart, she said with her lips, moist as coral and as glossy: